The Tenerife Tram operator holds a contract with Cuenca Tram for support in the current stage of commercial operation of the tram and other services
The vice-president of the Island Government and Metrotenerife president, Enrique Arriaga, reported that the Cuenca Tram service has been inaugurated – the first line of its kind in Ecuador. This new system represents a boost for mobility in this large Ecuadorian municipality and a benchmark for modernity in terms of public transport in the country.
Metrotenerife, a Cabildo de Tenerife company, is working on the launching of the tramway service on a 3.5-year contract. Since mid-2018, the Tenerife company has provided technical assistance to the Cuenca Tram Operator Unit on the diagnosis and pre-operation of the line and will now continue to do so during the commercial exploitation stage.
A Metrotenerife team, headed by the company’s managing director, Andres Muñoz de Dios, has worked on this guided transport project, now inaugurated and which is an important milestone for Ecuador, given that Cuenca Tram is the largest public transport system in this UNESCO Cultural Heritage city and, in particular, because it is the first modern tram system launched in Ecuador.
Commercial support for Cuenca Tram
The experience and good results recorded by Tenerife Tram, as well as the technical consultancies carried out in other cities in Spain and abroad by Metrotenerife, were decisive for Cuenca authorities to sign a technical assistance contract in 2018 with the Tenerife operator for a period of three and a half years.
An important contract through which Metrotenerife posted and maintains a team of professionals in the city of Cuenca to coordinate and manage the entire support and consultation process on the front line, and who are currently working on the commercial exploitation stage of the guided transport system. It should be noted that Cuenca Tram runs through the historic centre of the city with 27 stops and covers a route of 20.4 kilometres (round trip) with a fleet of 14 Citadis 302 vehicles.
Metrotenerife’s technical assistance contract also covered actions during the diagnosis phase (preparation of job manuals and personnel recruitment, communications plan, etc.) and pre-operation (supervision of the service’s test runs, definition of the operation and marketing program, establishment of management tools, etc.).
Internationalisation of Metrotenerife
Since 2013, the Tenerife Tram operator has promoted the export of services, which has enabled the expansion of the company’s activity and provided access to new national and international business niches. Metrotenerife’s technical capacity and the professionalism of its staff are endorsed by consulting contracts in a variety of areas (design, construction, operation and maintenance) obtained for guided transport systems in Israel, Morocco, Peru, Colombia, Madrid, Zaragoza, Malaga, Cadiz, among others, as well as through the catalogue of products developed by the company itself for the railway sector (SIMOVE and Via-Movil). Metrotenerife currently offers technical assistance on four continents.